Good day, Good Day!

Everyone loves a good black and white print right? It adds such a modern and thoughtful feeling to a space. Well, I am going to show you how to create a faux canvas print for only $4.00. These are great for areas where you’d like to have big artsy looking wall decor but you don’t want to commit to a $350.00 piece of art. These are so economical that you can change them as often as the mood strikes. Also, wouldn’t this be a super cute nursery item? Like a few maternity shots or newborn shots?? *swoon* Babies are so cute. Ok, back to DIYing.

Here is picture of the final product!

I think these prints came out pretty dang nice!

The trick is to use a cheap print called an engineering print. These can be printed at your local office supply store. Just email them a black and white photo that you love and ask for a 16×20 (or what ever size makes you happy) engineering print. This one cost $2.75. The larger ones cost about $4.00. Now, the print is not going to be HD. This is why you should pick an HD picture that is really crisp. This will help the print to still look nice once it’s blown up. Also, the picture will be on regular old paper, not photo stock. It will tear or crease if you’re rough with it so be careful and roll it up until you are ready to work with it.

Next you will need some large pieces of plain Styrofoam. It’s not fancy. It’s just sheets of foam.

I purchased this pack for $8.00 from Lowes, the home improvement store. It comes with about 6 large sheets of 1 inch thick Styrofoam. You can also use three sheets of foam poster board from your local dollar store! You want to measure these to be small enough for your picture to wrap around the foam and leave about an inch or more for taping. This allows the picture to be wrapped tightly and it allows enough room to tape it down nice and snug. (If you use the dollar store foam board them tape the three boards so they stay in a nice neat stack while you are wrapping the picture around.) I used a pen and ruler to measure the foam so that I had enough edge to wrap and still leave about an inch to tape down. I used an exacto knife to slice the foam.

Next up wrap the foam just like you would wrap a present and use strong duct tape to secure your folds onto the back of the foam. Make sure your corners are crisp.

As you can see, it doesn’t need to be pretty. It just needs to be really secure.

If you give yourself enough room to have a nice edge of paper to tape down this will be a breeze. It’s just like wrapping a present. The only issue I had was handing them. I tried to tape a metal loop on the back and that worked until the tape gave way. I finally came up with a way to hang them that works. I hung my pictures by hanging a super thin nail that has a tiny head and then pressing the picture onto the nail until it punctured through the tape and into the foam. Viola! Success!

I originally thought that the Branzino picture would be really nice in our dinning room but its just too small and the proportions aren’t right so it’s happily hanging in the kitchen until I decide what to pair it with. Here are shots of the other two that are hanging in our living room. The images I printed are not mine but I love them like they are.

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I hope you enjoy making these!

Love,

Danita